09/19/2025
My latest baseball t-shirt - an homage to the now-defunct Joplin Miners - holds several levels of significance for me:
-My wife grew up in Joplin, MO.
-My father-in-law was a miner.
-My dear friend, the late Gene “Rip” Winkler, played for the Miners around 1950. He was bound for the majors, but decided to trade his bat for a bible and became a celebrated Chicago minister.
-Gene’s teammate on the Miners did make it to the majors and became a legend: Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees.
-WhenMantle was a child, my father-in-law was Mickey’s Little League umpire when they all lived in Oklahoma.
-When my wife was a little girl, Mantle’s brother told her Santa Claus was not real. My mother-in-law never forgave the Mantles for ruining Christmas for a child.
-Baseball trivia, boys and girls: When Mantle was an unknown kid outside of the Miami/Commerce, Oklahoma area, he got a tryout with the St. Louis Cardinals. He and his dad drove from Oklahoma to St. Louis. On the day of the tryout, it rained. The Mantles drove home without Mickey getting to show his stuff. Not long after that fateful day, the Yankees signed him… and the rest is history. Had it not rained, instead of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in New York, we might have had Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial in St. Louis.
